55

Too quickly the pleasurable days came to an end. It was time for the prince who had become part of a peasant family to return to his former and future life.

The day before his departure, Anna wrapped a small loaf of bread, a hunk of goat’s cheese, and a few turnips in a cloth, and they walked to the stream that flowed by the great old willow to partake of one last simple meal together. The rains had passed and the day was bright and clear, although the crisp breeze that wafted over them carried with it the bite of the coming winter.

Sergei lay back on the grass, closed his eyes, and drank in the exquisite sounds of the meadow—the splashing of water in the stream as it tumbled across the rocks, the sweet call of a lark, and the gentle rustle of the lacy fingers of the willow.

“So, this is the place you love most of all, Anna?” he said dreamily, a smile of contentment spread over his face.

“It always used to be,” she replied. “And now that I am here again, I think I would say so still.”

“What makes it so special?”

“No matter what the season or the time of day, I find myself enchanted here.”

“Enchanted? How do you mean?”

“Mostly I came here to read and think. I suppose you could say this was where I first left Katyk—in my mind. Under these spreading branches I have taken many a long journey to far and exotic lands. And this tough old bark has heard more than its share of a young girl’s secrets.”

“And what kind of secrets do you tell an old willow, Anna?”

“Oh, nothing that would amount to much in the larger scheme of the world, I suppose. But if my ramblings went up to heaven as the prayers I meant them for, then I am sure they meant something to God.”

“If I spoke to the willow,” said Sergei lightly, yet with a definite earnestness in his tone, “do you think God would hear and answer me?”

“Why not speak directly to God?”

“And put some poor priest out of his job?”

“You know better than that, Sergei.”

“Because of you, Anna, I suppose I do know what you mean.” He paused and closed his eyes again as if he had resumed listening to the sounds of nature about them. “If I did pray right now, I would ask God to make this day go on for ever and ever.”

Anna sighed. “And I would join you in it.”

“But it would be a foolish prayer, would it not?” he added. “Good things don’t last forever; otherwise how would we know the difference between sadness and happiness?”

When Anna did not reply, Sergei changed the subject. “I have never yet told you much about my year away.”

“I hoped you would before you left.”

“You want to hear about it, then?”

“Oh yes . . . of course!”

Sergei remained quiet for a few moments, collecting his thoughts. Hints of the mental turmoil that had sent him away in the first place seemed to settle over his countenance, even though when he spoke again, his voice remained cheery for Anna’s sake.

“Yasnaya Polyana, the ‘bright glade,’ is a remarkable place,” he began. “It is a world all its own, and I doubt it has changed one iota in the past hundred years. Tolstoy attributes his love for the Motherland to be a direct result of his life in the glade.”

“Didn’t you tell me he wrote while there?”

“Yes, both War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I suppose I harbored a secret hope it would inspire me as greatly.”

“And . . . ?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute.” He lazily plucked a blade of grass and began to examine it as if it held the secrets of life he had been searching for in his travels.

“Count Tolstoy is a tremendous man,” he went on after a moment. “But he can be rather intense. Nevertheless, he taught me a great deal and was extremely tolerant of my occasional ‘frivolous lapses,’ as he called them.”

“He called you frivolous?” smiled Anna. “He must be unusual as well as talented.”

“I’ll always be grateful to him. But after a while I knew it was time I moved on, for both our sakes. I did not want to wear out either my welcome or his patience.”

“Where did you go then?”

“I had hoped to find my own Yasnaya Polyana,” answered Sergei. “Some place where I could capture the same creative spirit that he found there. I traveled east as far as the Urals, then south to the Caucasus. I visited the provinces and the Russian peasantry, as I’ve always wanted to do. But I only saw. I was a spectator and always a stranger.”

He paused again reflectively. Anna said nothing, but waited for him to continue.

“Do you know where I finally ended up? On my family’s estate by the Black Sea. It was an ingenious place to hide, don’t you think? The last place anyone would think to look for me. There were only the caretaker and his wife, and I swore them to absolute secrecy. I stayed there through the winter and finally finished my book.”

“Did you really? Oh, I’m happy for you, Sergei!” exclaimed Anna.

“When I return to the capital I hope to deliver it to a publisher. Count Tolstoy says for me to expect the censors to tear it to ribbons—”

“It won’t get you into trouble, will it, Sergei?”

“Trouble is routine for writers these days, unless you are a Tolstoy or a Turgenev, to whom the censors are more generous. Otherwise, they are as nit-picking as a gaggle of old women. It’s part of what you have to expect. A few years back they went so far as imagining that the notes in musical compositions might contain subversive codes.”

“What will you do if they censor what you have written?”

“There are ways to get around all that, in the most natural of Russian traditions—greasing the proper palms. But my book is not seditious, Anna. It is honest, and unfortunately in this country that often amounts to the same thing.”

“Tell me what it is like . . . can you?”

“It is simply a young man’s war experiences. I would have brought the manuscript for you to read, but as I was getting ready to come, I found myself reticent about showing it to you.”

“Whatever for?” asked Anna, incredulous.

“I can’t imagine now. Simple embarrassment, I suppose. Now I regret that decision. I would value your opinion.”

“I know it must be wonderful!”

“Your objective opinion, please.”

“I’m sure I shall objectively think it the most wonderful book I have ever read,” she said with a grin.

He smiled, and looked deeply into her eyes. “Tell me, Anna,” he said, “after this time together, do you believe we might have a chance for happiness together?”

“I never had a doubt of that,” she answered. “But what of the realities of . . . the differences between us?”

“They mean nothing to me—surely you can see that.”

“I meant your family, Sergei. Your father would never give his blessing if he knew where you were right now.”

“My father . . . should I care what he thinks?”

“Sergei, you know you love and respect him. You know how you desire his approval.”

“I grudgingly admit to that weakness in my character. But for over twenty years I have been struggling to gain that approval—without success. Does it not seem time that I give it up altogether?”

“Do you really think so?”

“I told you how cool he was when I was at home. Anna, we sat at the dinner table together twice, and he did not so much as look in my direction! Is it any wonder that I repacked my bags immediately to come to you?”

“Going away as you did a year ago hurt your family deeply, Sergei. They just don’t understand what you’ve been going through. Perhaps if you tried to talk to your father—”

“Oh, but I have—so many times! Anna, don’t you see—he is just not interested in what I think about, nor does he care in the least to try to understand me. I see nothing for it but to quit trying and not worry about him anymore. I have to live my own life.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes . . . yes, I do.”

Sergei paused and took two or three deep breaths to calm himself.

“Anna,” he said, “I am sorry you have been thrust into all this. But the difficulties with my father really have nothing to do with you at all. He knows nothing about us. My father and I have been at each other’s throats for years, and I know in advance what he is liable to say if I try to seek his approval—to marry you or for anything else, for that matter. That is why it is best that I keep him out of my considerations altogether. The only way we manage to get along is to keep miles apart. Why my departure from St. Petersburg last year should have upset him, I cannot imagine. But I do not intend to subject you to his stinging criticism, any more than I intend to be talked out of marrying you because of him. You cannot even talk me out of it, Anna!”

Anna smiled. “I wasn’t trying to dissuade you,” she said quietly. “I was only trying to be practical about the differences in station that are there. I do disagree with you about one thing, Sergei, and that is that we mustn’t ignore them.”

“I’m sure my father will make that impossible,” Sergei said.

“Princess Katrina tells me he is under a great deal of pressure these days,” said Anna, trying to be conciliatory. “Both from the terrorism and the awful uncertainty of never knowing where the next explosion may go off, and from all the dissention within the government itself.”

“How you manage to stay so well informed, Anna Yevnovna, is always a surprise to me. Such an amazing young peasant girl you are!”

“Sergei, please—this is no time for all that. Be serious. It is important that you think of your father’s position. It is not easy to be so close to the tsar, to act as a voice of moderation in such a volatile political climate.”

“There you go again, the political expert,” chided Sergei with a smile.

“Katrina says your father has made dangerous enemies on both sides,” Anna went on, not to be diverted.

“Maybe you are right,” sighed Sergei. “Perhaps I am being insensitive to his position.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A man in a battle zone, which St. Petersburg has certainly become, who walks such a perilous line between life and death—I suppose he would take a more serious view of family ties. My father must wonder what kind of heir will follow him. That no doubt intensifies his disappointment in me all the more.”

“How can he be disappointed in you?”

“Aren’t fathers always disappointed in their sons never measuring up to their expectations?”

“He must know how brave you were in the war, and how you risked your own life to save Lieutenant Grigorov.”

“How did you know about all that?”

“Lieutenant Grigorov told me.”

“I didn’t realize you knew him.”

“We have run into each other several times in the Winter Palace when I have accompanied the princess.”

“And are the two of you friends?”

Anna thought about the question momentarily. “I suppose you could say so,” she replied, “as much as a servant girl and a Cossack guard could ever be.”

“That is an interesting connection,” he said. “I have not even thought of the fellow since the war, and now he turns up crossing paths with you and Katrina. But as to my father,” Sergei went on with a shake of his head, “sometimes I think that the only way I can please him would have been for me to die in battle instead of being only wounded. Then he could have been proud of me forever. As it is, my wound healed, and we are back where we started.”

“If he knew you better, Sergei, he would be proud of you. He couldn’t help it—I just know it. If only you could—”

Anna stopped.

“If only I gave him the chance, is that what you meant to say? If only I would stop running away from him?”

Anna shrugged. “Now that you say the words, I don’t see how I would ever have the right to think that,” she said. “I’m sure you have done all you could.”

“Maybe not all I could, but certainly all I know to do. And how can my presence help matters when he will hardly speak to me? It is a classic dilemma of misunderstanding between father and son.”

“A dilemma that needs no further obstacles in the middle of it,” said Anna, bringing the conversation around to its previous thread.

From her tone, Sergei knew exactly what she meant.

“I will not choose between you and my father,” he said defiantly. “If he does love me, as I suppose he does in his own way, he would not require that of me. And please, Anna, neither can you.”

“I will not,” replied Anna quietly. “But neither will I stop looking for a new tolerance on the part of your father toward you, and perhaps in time even toward me.”

“As you wish, Anna. It will be difficult for me to hold out such hope. At least I can be sure that your family will give us their blessing.”

“I suppose it is easier to move up socially than down.”

“Don’t ever speak of yourself as down, Anna. You are leagues worthier than I or any of my class could hope to be. Your father’s acceptance of me simply transcends trivialities like social classes. Perhaps it is the natural result of his faith in God . . . I do not know. He has judged me by who I am, apart from name and title and money—things that aren’t truly my own in the first place.”

“Then I shall pray your father comes into such an acceptance of the two of us as well.”

“I must admit, Anna, I cannot be confident in such a miracle occurring.”

“Then I shall have enough confidence for both of us!”